THERE IS ALWAYS A FLAW IN TRUE BEAUTY. FRANCIS BACON
ZARYA ARTIST / MIKHAIL CHUVAKIN (CHANSY)

From 8 November to 4 December 2022, the first guest of the revamped Zarya Artist Residency will be Vladivostok-based artist and curator Mikhail Chuvakin (Chansy, speorls).

Mikhail makes graphic art and explores various printing techniques, decoding verbal symbols into visual imagery and creating a signature system of symbols. He also supports other young graphic artists in Vladivostok: he curates group exhibitions and is planning to start collaborating with local (and not only) creatives through his independent publishing house Fun is Over Press. For his Zarya residency project he is planning to assemble a light installation based on his signature system of symbols.

  • On 26 November at 17:00, Mikhail Chuvakin will host an artist talk in the Zarya CCA cinema hall, where he will discuss his practice and contemporary trends in printing.

Mikhail Chuvakin (b. 1990, Bolshoi Kamen, Primorsky Region) is a Vladivostok-based artist and curator. An alumnus of the Far Eastern Federal University (Vladivostok), and the founder of the OTETZ screen printing workshop (2012–2019), since 2020, he has been working as an artist-decorator, and exhibition technnician at the Vladimir K. Arseniev Museum of Far East History (Vladivostok). In 2020, the Artetage Centre of Contemporary Art (Vladivostok) presented Mikhail's solo show Fun Is Over. In 2021 and 2022, Chuvakin curated and participated in the Fun Is Over 2.0 exhibition of graphic art in the eponymous space in Vladivostok and the Atavistic show hosted by the Arka Gallery (Vladivostok). In 2022, he participated in the group show at the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art (PERMM) titled She Was as Beautiful as a Russian Landscape.

Image caption: Untitled, 2019.